F 127 
.C6 R8 
Copy 1 |§ 



The 

First Century of 

LaJ^e Champlain 



Caroline Halstead Royce 



The First Century^f 
Lake Champlain 



By 



Caroline Halstead T^o^ce 




TN^e MV»\\€v Pre 5?. 






Copyright 1909 
by caroline halstkad royce 



HecQiv«d r-orr. 
Copyright Office. 

ftii 2lj 1910 



The Lal^e Speaks 

Far stretch my shining leagues; come, trust to me, 

O sons of men, and follow where I lead. 

Leave the cool forest shadows to the deer, 

And seek the sun. Wampum and fleur-de-lis, 

Arrow and bullet, furry winter coats 

Of little neighbors — bring your treasures all, 

And I will speed your journey, north or south. 

Ask me no secrets. 'Tis the fickle earth 

Gives up the dagger or the victim's curse. 

See you my beckoning distance? There it lies, 

Your promised country ! Launch your boat, and come ! 



The First Century of 
Lake Champlain 




The First Century of Lake Champlain 

THE DISCOVERER 

*| T was the third of July, 1609, a clear and sunny 
day of our beautiful northern summer, with the 
sky blue as sapphire, the water shining and spark- 
ling in little waves, and the shores green with thick 
foliage — great trees growing close to the water's 
edge, and wild grape vines running over them. Out 
from the river of the Iroquois southward into the lake 
came a little fleet of twenty-four light birch-bark canoes, 
paddled by a painted and feathered crew of sixty Algon- 
quin and Huron braves on the war-path. In the foremost 
canoe, kneeling in the frail craft so that he might look for- 
ward, was a white man, the first who had ever seen the lake, 
gazing eagerly into the distance, and scanning the shores 
with the keen observation of a trained explorer. His eyes 
were dark and bright, set wide apart, with arching brows, 
his nose was long and straight, his mouth both firm and 
mobile, with a small moustache and a goatee on the chin. 
His dark hair fell in his neck in short, glossy curls. He 
wore a soft, wide hat, a close-fitting doublet with rolling 
collar, long hose drawn up from ankle to thigh, and the 
Indian moccasins. A bandoleer with an ammunition box 



The First Century of Lake Champlain 



crossed his shoulders, a sword was by his side, and one 
hand lightly grasped his arquebus. He was then about thirty- 
two years of age, an officer of the King of France, expe- 
perienced in war and in exploration, and his name was 
Samuel de Champlain. 

As the lovely prospect widened before him, islands and 
cliffs and wooded shores, with blue mountain ranges bound- 
ing the horizon, he was saying to himself : "This is the great 
lake of which the Algonquins told me last winter in our 
cabins at Quebec. It leads far away to the south, to the 
country of their bitterest foes, the Iroquois. What a king- 
dom for my sovereign and my faith !" 

At that moment there was not another white man on all 
this continent between Champlain and the little colony of 
Englishmen on the James River in Virginia. A few weeks 
later Henry Hudson, the English captain of a Dutch ship, 
sailed up the North River in the "Half Moon" to the head 
of navigation. The Pilgrims did not land from the "May- 
flower" at Plymouth until eleven years later. 

Champlain's party passed slowly through the lake, hunting 
and fishing, and Champlain explored it very thoroughly, the 
Indians pointing out the headlands and shoals and land- 
marks that their fathers had taught them to know, with all 
the pride of natives of the soil showing their ancestral pos- 
sessions to a stranger. They paddled by day and camped 
on shore at night, sleeping in the woods under shelters of 
bark. As they drew nearer to the southern end of the lake, 
and nearer to the enemy's country, they slept by day and 



The First Century of Lake Champlain 



traveled by night, stealthily and swiftly, like so many 
panthers with glowing eyes fixed on their prey. 

On July 30th the battle was fought which has been so 
many times described, from the vivid details given by Cham- 
plain himself in his published Voyages. His party of 
northern Indians was met at the peninsula of Ticonderoga 
by two hundred Iroquois from the Mohawk valley. Both par- 
ties left their canoes and went on shore to fight. Champlain 
stepped out in front of his howling and leaping savages, 
and the Iroquois stood paralyzed at sight of him. He had 
put on for the battle light armor which he carried with 
him, a back-piece, cuisses, and a helmet with plumes. The 
Iroquois chiefs wore plumes, too, eagle's feathers stuck in 
their scalp-locks, and so Champlain was able to distinguish 
them. He raised his arquebus, which contained four balls, 
and fired, killing two chiefs and wounding a third. Then 
one of the other two Frenchmen who accompanied him fired 
another shot, and the Iroquois broke and ran, fleeing panic- 
stricken back through their well-known forest paths to the 
banks of the Mohawk. Little they knew that another gen- 
eration of Iroquois would learn to aim the arquebus from 
the cover of the forest, and to pick off many a French settler 
along the St. Lawrence as he worked in his field. 

Exulting as men must exult who have had thunder and 
lightning brought down from heaven to fight their battles 
for them, the Algonquins passed swiftly back through the 
lake with their hapless prisoners and with Champlain, and 
down the "river of the Iroquois" and the St. Lawrence to 



The First Century of Lake Champlam 



Quebec, where Champlain drew an excellent map of the 
lake to take back with him to France when he sailed early 
in September. Welcomed back to his native land, he told 
the story of his discoveries to the king, Henry of Navarre, 
and many times he described the lake which he had 
discovered to nobles and court ladies, to sailors, to mer- 
chants and to geographers. Something of it he must have 
told to the gentle little girl with the fair and serious face, 
Marie Helene, whom he married the next year, when she 
was only twelve years old, after the custom of the period, 
that he might obtain control of her dowry. He did not bring 
her to Canada with him until ten years afterward (1620), 
when she lived four years in Quebec. Isle Helene at Mon- 
treal he named after her, and he planted the first rose-trees 
at Quebec (1611) that she might find them growing there 
when she came. I wonder if there are roots of those rose- 
trees still growing near the old ramparts. 

Champlain never saw our lake again, although the 
greater part of his life was henceforward spent, not in 
France, but in Quebec. A brilliant courtier, a gallant sol- 
dier, an adventurous and fortunate explorer, a splendid fig- 
ure he stands against the dark background of the wilderness, 
fighting its savage battles, knowing its wild, keen pleasures, 
and leaving his name forever fixed upon it. 




Pere Jogues 

HIRTY-THREE years have passed away, and it is 
now August of 1642. Again a party of savages 
are paddling their canoes through the lake from 
the north, but this time it is a band of Iroquois 
from the Mohawk valley, returning from a raid into 
Canada, and whooping with exultation over the pris- 
oners they have taken on the St. Lawrence— a number of 
their ancient enemies, the Hurons, and three Frenchmen, 
missionaries to the western tribes. One of the latter is a man 
only a little younger than Champlain when he discovered the 
lake, but he carries no weapons, and he does not look for- 
ward with the eager gaze of the explorer as the unfamiliar 
shores unfold so rapidly in the brilliant light of the mid- 
summer da5^. He sits with his head bowed upon his breast, 
and when he lifts his delicate, oval face, with its sad eyes and 
sensitive mouth, it is to seek to exchange a look with one of 
his fellow captives, and to make some signal to him of com- 
fort and of courage. 

He wears a long black cassock, with a rosary and crucifix 
hanging from his girdle, and sandals on his feet. The cas- 
sock is stained with blood, and his hands are horribly 
mangled. The finger nails have been gnawed off by the 
teeth of the Iroquois, and the wounds are covered with 



The First Century of Lake Champlain 



flies and mosquitoes which he cannot drive away. His bare 
head shows the tonsure of the Societas Jesu — the Order of 
Loyola. It is Isaac Jogues, the saint and martyr, the gen- 
tlest, sweetest, most lovable in his heroism of all the Jesuit 
missionaries who devoted their lives to the conversion of the 
heathen of New France. 

Jogues and his fellow prisoners were taken on shore 
but once during the journey through the lake. August 
10, they landed on a small island near the southern end. 
It belongs now to the town of Westport, and it is 
almost in sight of the place where Champlain routed the 
Iroquois of the preceding generation so easily with his 
arquebus. Here the savages had rare sport torturing their 
prisoners, and the next day they carried them through a 
lake never before seen by white men, and which Jogues 
afterward named Lac St. Sacrement. Then through the 
forest to the Iroquois villages upon the Mohawk, and to 
prolonged and inconceivable tortures, renewed again and 
again for the eight or nine months of their captivity. Their 
only consolation, aside from the mournful one of each other's 
companionship, was an occasional opportunity to baptize a 
dying Indian baby, fit for baptism because it had not yet 
sinned, or a captive at the stake who could be induced to 
make some expression of comprehension or willingness to 
accept the religion of the stranger. 

One of Jogues' companions, Rene Goupil, was toma- 
hawked at his side before the winter was over, and that the 
mental anguish occasioned by the loss of his friend was 



The First Century of Lake Champlain 



much keener than the pain of his physical suffering 
is shown by his own account published in the Jesuit 
Relations. The other, Guillaume Couture, was tortured with 
the other two, and shared in all their sufferings, but at last 
was adopted into an Iroquois family, and later became a 
messenger and interpreter between the French and the Iro- 
quois tribes. 

The next summer Jogues escaped by the help of Dutch 
colonists at Schenectady and Beverwyck (now Albany), who 
bent their shoulders bravely to "the white man's burden," 
giving goods for his ransom to the value of six hundred 
guilders — no small thing to do for a stranger so alien in 
blood and faith. Arendt van Curler, then the chief man 
among the colonists of the upper Hudson, was most active 
in his rescue, and Dominie Megapolensis, sent out that year 
by the Classis of Amsterdam, gave him a Christian welcome 
to Beverwyck, and sat down with him to a sociable disputa- 
tion of doctrine. What a picture it is, the ruddy, 
round-faced Dutchman, eager to elaborate his Calvinistic 
theology, and the wasted figure of the Frenchman, his eyes 
burning with something which was not doctrine — ^how could 
they find a common ground of discussion? They never did 
find it, so they clasped hands and parted, each one, I hope, 
remembering the other in his prayers as one not beyond the 
possibility of ultimate attainment of the truth. 

Governor Kieft at New Amsterdam gave Jogues food and 
clothing, and put him on board a home-bound ship, and on 
Christmas day of 1643 the weary traveler, just landed in 



The First Century of Lake Ckamplain 



France, heard mass once more on his native soil, in an 
ecstasy of joy and thankfulness. He was received with the 
greatest rejoicing by the friends who had given him up for 
dead, and all France praised and reverenced him, the queen 
herself kissing his mangled hands. The Pope listened to his 
story, and gave him an especial dispensation by which he 
was still allowed to offer the sacrifice of the mass, notwith- 
standing th-e mutilations which would otherwise have for- 
bidden it. Moulded to the perfection of an instrument with 
which to work the fixed and far-reaching purposes of the 
Order, his zeal fanned to a still higher flame, he was sent 
back to finish his mission among the Iroquois. 

So we see him once more upon the lake, passing through 
again from Canada, in the spring of 1646. This time he 
went in command of his own party, and bearing words of 
authority as a messenger to the Iroquois. Much had been 
learned in these four years of dealing with the savages, and 
by direction Jogues left off his priest's cassock, the dress 
which had given the Jesuits the name of "the Black Gowns" 
among the Dutch and Indians, and wore the ordinary short 
coat of the Canadian peasant. There had always been some- 
thing in the meekness of Jogues, and in his devotion to the 
mysterious observances of his religion, which had stirred the 
Iroquois heart to a peculiar frenzy of hatred and fear (even 
the Indian women hated him, and set their children to torture 
him), and he was wisely endeavoring to remove every hin- 
drance to the supreme end of gaining an ascendency over 
them. With all his added experience, with the poise given him 



The First Century of Lake Champlain 



by the subtle counsel of his superiors in France, it would seem 
that he might have been able to master the savages at this 
time, as they were mastered by some of the later Jesuit 
missionaries, Joncaire for instance, plotting in the wigwams 
of the Long House against the enemies of France and of the 
Order. But Jogues was born for martyrdom, and not for 
dominion of any kind. And not for one instant did his 
faithful soul harbor the thought of any other destiny. "I 
go back to die," said he as he bade farewell to his friends 
in Canada, after another journey back to Quebec in July. 

When he came once more to the Mohawk villages, 
there was something increasingly ominous in the air. Storm, 
disease and blight had struck the Indian fields and wigwams, 
and the cry rose, "It is because of the white stranger with 
his sign of the cross ! We torture him at our pleasure, we 
have made him our slave, and he mutters the incantations of 
a sorcerer in revenge ! He must die !" And in a gust of 
savage rage they struck a tomahawk into his brain, 
October i8, 1646, as he was bending his head to enter 
a Mohawk wigwam. His Dutch friends heard of 
his death, and Governor Kieft sent the news of it to 
Europe, which it reached eight months after the event. All 
his letters and journals, which were very full, were published 
in 1647 i" the Jesuit Relations — that famous collection of 
records from the missionaries of the Order all over the 
world, records of just such devotion as that of Jogues, dif- 
fering only in detail. Nothing is more wonderful in the 
history of the religious consciousness of man than the way 



The First Century of Lake Champlain 



in which the Jesuit missionaries of that age sought martyr- 
dom — and the way in which they met it. The enthusiasm of 
self-sacrifice was kept at a white heat by the publication 
of these reports, and the Jesuit Relations were like an elec- 
tric battery of tremendous dynamic force, to which one more 
cell was added every time the story of such a life and death 
as that of Isaac Jogues was written therein. 

And the lake will never forget him. Two hundred and 
fifty years after his first sad vision of these shores, a bell 
in a church tower in a little village near the scene of his 
tortures on the island (Westport-on-Lake-Champlain) was 
given his name in solemn ceremony. So the sweet devotion 
of his constant soul passes on in the veneration awakened by 
every stroke of the bell in hearts which know his story, and 
know what courage and self-sacrifice are worth. In the old 
French of the Relations we find a sentence which describes 
his character in quaint and tender words : 

"Avec une patience de fer et une charite d'or." 




Arendt Van Curler 

LL through this first century the lake was French 
if it was not Iroquois, its nearest approach 
to civilization being the tiny French settle- 
ments on the St. Lawrence. But far, far away 
to the south, where the Mohawk River joins the Hud- 
son, lay a little Dutch trading colonic, Rensselaer wyck, where 
Albany now stands. Here we shall find, not the dashing 
romance of the discoverer, nor the unearthly devotion of the 
martyr, but the dear homely virtues of the Dutch settler, 
sober, shrewd and kindly, busying himself only with making 
the wilderness into a place fit for vrouw en kinderen. 

The principal man of this colonic was Arendt van Curler, 
called by the Indians "Corlear." He came from Holland in 
1630 as agent for his cousin, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, the 
First Patroon, and for thirty-seven years managed the affairs 
of his vast estate on the Hudson with wisdom and efficiency. 
He was a man of administrative ability, both just and 
shrewd, and his dealings with the Indians were character- 
ized by a cool, acute insight which gave him a control over 
them almost complete. He it was who had rescued Isaac 
Jogues from his captivity, and many another despairing 
Frenchman did he deliver from the savages, for the pure 
love of humanity. 



The First Century of Lake Ckamplain 



Twenty years after Pere Jogues was killed, the French of 
Canada, tormented by constant raids of the Iroquois, de- 
termined to seek them out in their homes on the Mohawk, 
and there defeat and subdue them. With this end in view, 
two expeditions went through the lake in 1666. The first 
was under the Chevalier de Courcelles in January, when the 
lake was frozen and covered with snow, deep and drifted, 
and the party of five hundred men traveled on snow-shoes, 
dragging sleds laden with their baggage and provisions. If 
you see a vision some winter night, under an arctic sky 
sparkling like steel, of a long procession of figures, wrapped 
in great rough blue capotes, stealing away over the shining 
plain to the southward, you may know that they are the 
ghosts of this war-party of Courcelles, engaged in the first 
armed invasion of Indian territory by the French of Canada. 
It was a wonderful march, but it accomplished nothing in 
the Mohawk country except the really remarkable achieve- 
ment of getting back with inconsiderable loss. Worn out, 
frozen and starved, stricken by snow-blindness, and harassed 
by skirmishes of the savages, they accepted with gratitude 
the succor offered them by Van Curler and his settlers at 
Schenectady, a new settlement begun by Van Curler only 
five years before, twenty miles west of Ft. Orange, Van 
Curler warmed and fed the officers, but Courcelles would not 
allow the common soldiers to come inside the comfortable 
Dutch houses, fearing that they would never leave those cosy 
chimney corners to journey north with him again. 

The next October came a much larger force, under Mar- 



The First Century of Lake Champlain 



quis de Tracy, the Governor of Canada, six hundred regular 
troops in uniform, six hundred Canadian militia, and an 
irregular body of about a hundred Indians, in three hundred 
boats and canoes. This was by far the largest war-party 
and the most picturesque spectacle of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, sweeping bravely on in the beautiful autumn weather, 
through Lake Champlain and Lake George, and then follow- 
ing the forest trails southwest to the Mohawk. This expe- 
dition was very successful, burning the Indian villages and 
destroying the crops, and bringing the savages to a frame 
of mind which strongly made for peace. Again the French 
proved the hospitality of the Dutch of Schenectady, the 
officers dining with Van Curler when they had finished their 
campaign. After their return to Canada, Gov. Tracy sent 
back a formal letter of invitation to Van Curler to visit him 
at Quebec. This was not only a personal honor to Van 
Curler, but a politic courtesy to an official of English pos- 
sessions, as Rensselaerwyck and New Amsterdam had now 
become. Van Curler, after due consultation with Nicolls, 
the English governor at New York, accepted the invitation, 
and thus saw Lake Champlain for the first time. Nicolls 
gave him a letter to Tracy, and verbal instructions to draw 
a map of Lake Champlain for use in the colonial archives. 

He was now a man of middle age, leaving a wife and 
family behind him in Schenectady. He was married not long 
after the time when he assisted Pere Jogues to escape from 
the Iroquois. In June of 1643 he wrote one of his long let- 
ters to the Patroon in 'Tatria" (as the early Dutch settlers 



The First Century of Lake Champlain 



lovingly called the home-land, Holland), in which he gave 
an account of his ride on horseback out to the Mohawk vil- 
lage where the Frenchmen were held captive, and of his 
negotiations for their release. In this letter he informs his 
cousin of his approaching marriage with "Antonia Slagh- 
boom, widow of Jonas Bronck," dropping in this bit of intel- 
ligence between the most prosaic statements of business 
details, as though he wished it to be understood that he was 
not in the least excited about it, but he cannot help coming 
back to it once more before he closes his letter, and letting 
his cousin know that his Antonia "is called a good house- 
keeper." Doubtless she was all that, and more too, let us 
hope, and if she was a good wife we may be sure that her 
heart was heavy when he told her good-bye on his departure 
for Canada the 28th of May, 1667. 

However, he went on a peaceful mission, and not on a 
journey particularly dangerous for a man with an experience 
of nearly forty years in forest travel, and this northward 
route was as well known at that day as it is now, although 
far less swiftly traversed. He had with him, besides his party 
of woodsmen for paddling and hunting, a young French- 
man called La Fontaine, just rescued from the Mohawks who 
had taken him prisoner, and going happily back to his friends 
in Canada. They carried on their shoulders from Schenec- 
tady the light bark canoes with which the journey was to be 
made, and launched them at the head of Lac St. Sacrement, 
skimming lightly over its quiet surface, and then across the 
portage to the lake of Champlain. Here they found safe 



The First Century of Lake Champlain 



passage until they reached the widest part of the lake (what 
we call "broad lake," between Burlington and Essex), when 
a sudden storm came up. They probably tried to gain the 
shelter of Willsboro bay, for the account says that in a great 
bay on the western side of the lake, "opposite the Isles des 
quatres vents" (the Four Brothers), one of the canoes upset 
in a tempest, and Van Curler was drowned. Some accounts 
say "near Split Rock." 

In the death of Van Curler New Netherlands, so recently 
become New York, suffered a great loss. No other man of 
his time held so completely the confidence of English, Dutch, 
French and Iroquois. He is a fine example of the Dutch 
burgher transplanted from Holland to the wilds of America, 
there to bear a potent hand in the formation of a new com- 
monwealth. Brave, sagacious, upright, generous, he was at 
once the friend of the Indian and the deliverer of the In- 
dian's captive. And for more than a century after his death 
the Indians called the governor of New York "Corlear," 
personifying the official representative of the white men on 
the Hudson by this title. As long as the Iroquois tribes 
were recognized as a political body to be negotiated with by 
the colonies, the authorities of New York were designated 
in every treaty as "Corlear." And for many years the lake 
in which he was drowned was called by both white and red 
men, "Corlear's Lake." 




Peter Schuyler — "Quider" 



rp> HAVE chosen four men to represent the history of 
' this first century, or, rather, I have chosen four 



events upon the lake which can only be understood 
by some knowledge of the lives of the men who 
were the principal actors in them. First, we have two 
Frenchmen: the discoverer, Samuel de Champlain, and 
Isaac Jogues, the Jesuit missionary. Then we have two 
Dutchmen : Arendt van Curler, an example of the early 
Dutch settlers on the upper Hudson, and last of all Peter 
Schuyler, first mayor of Albany, judge, land-owner, council- 
man, fur-trader and Indian Commissioner, and the only one 
of the four who was born in America. 

Peter Schuyler belonged to one of the best and the most 
influential of the Dutch families who owned vast estates 
along the Hudson River — the Van Rensselaers, the Van 
Cortlandts, the Livingstons and the Schuylers, forming a 
landed aristocracy which held sway over that region in 
an autocracy almost entirely beneficent, bringing in set- 
tlers to clear away the forests and till the land, building 
sawmills, trading with the Indians, acting as magistrates 
and colonial officials, and taking command of bands of vol- 
unteers upon occasions of Indian attack and depredation, all 
through the early history of the State of New York. 



The First Century of Lake Champlain 



When the English took possession of New Netherlands, in 
1664, Peter Schuyler was only seven years old, and his life 
was therefore spent under English rule, and the succession 
of British sovereigns under whom he lived, from Charles II. 
to George I., had no more faithful subject, and none more 
active in resistance to the power of France on this continent. 
The settlements of Albany and Schenectady formed at that 
time the extreme northwestern frontier of the American 
colonies, with a stretch of forest and stream three hundred 
miles to the northward without a single European roof-tree. 
Then came the tiny French settlements on the St. Lawrence, 
and it would seem that men who had bowed at the name of 
the Prince of Peace might have been willing to let that vast 
gloomy solitude divide them from their enemies. But Count 
Frontenac landed at Quebec in the summer of 1689, burning 
with a desire to distinguish himself in the extension of the 
power of France on this continent. (They say that his beau- 
tiful young wife hated him, and had plotted that he might be 
sent far away from France and among dangers manifold.) 
Like an arrow from his bow he sent his war-party out, and it 
struck full where it was aimed — upon the little Dutch vil- 
lage of Schenectady, where Frenchmen had been succored 
in their need by Van Curler, only twenty-four years before. 
Surprised in their sleep in the bitter cold of a February 
night, the inhabitants were massacred with the utmost bar- 
barity, and the little town was burned, the French returning 
instantly upon their own trail, and reaching Canada with 
booty and prisoners before any rally of volunteers could be 



The First Century of Lake Ch£miplain 



made for their pursuit.* The French and their Indian allies 
whooped and danced for joy on the St. Lawrence, and the 
tribes on the Mohawk said : "What is this ? The white men 
with the fleur-de-lis are more like us than these stupid, hard- 
working beavers whom we call the children of Corlear. The 
Dutchmen let themselves be butchered and burned in their 
sleep, and now their neighbors will not even strike back at 
the men who did it! We will make ourselves allies of the 
French ! But first let us see what Quider will do." 

And "Quider," which was their name for Peter Schuyler, 
because they had no sounds in their barren language with 
which to say "Peter," understood perfectly what thoughts 
lay behind the impassive faces of the red men, and knew 
what was necessary to be done. New England, who had her 
own reckoning to make with Frontenac, fitted out a naval 
expedition which took Port Royal and menaced Quebec, but 
this would not serve to protect the naked western frontier 
of New York, nor deter the northern tribes from swooping 
down in their "Indian summer" raids through Lake Cham- 
plain. There was an attempt to raise and equip a land force, 
commanded by General Winthrop of Connecticut, to invade 
Canada by way of the Champlain valley, but the colonies 
were too weak to carry out the plan effectively, and it was 
given up. However, enough arms, provisions and canoes 
had been collected at Albany to fit out a party of thirty white 



• While France thrust at England in this raid through the forests of another 
continent, she made ready for a deadlier blow nearer home, fighting for James 
Stuart at the battle of the Boyne in Ireland, July 1, 1690. 



The First Century oi Lake Champlain 



men, English and Dutch of the upper Hudson, and one hun- 
dred and twenty Indians, and Winthrop gave the command 
to a younger brother of "Quider," Johannes Schuyler, then 
only twenty-two years old. They left camp at the head of 
the lake August 13, 1690, rendezvoused at Crown Point two 
days after, and then made a dash through the lake and down 
the Richelieu until they hid their canoes on the river bank 
and fell upon the men at work in the fields just outside the 
fort at La Prairie. They killed six men and took nineteen 
prisoners, destroyed houses, barns and growing crops, and 
returned in triumph with little loss to themselves. Another 
raid was made the next spring, also under young Captain 
Johannes, and these successes had a marked influence 
upon the Indians, but still they were felt to be less 
than a sufficient reprisal for the dreadful destruction of 
Schenectady, where sixty were massacred outright, and many 
carried away to captivity and torture. Therefore greater 
preparations were made for the next year, and the opening 
of spring saw a force of workmen on Wood Creek, as the 
narrow southern end of Lake Champlain was often called, 
building canoes and shaping paddles from the trees which 
they hewed upon the shore. These were perhaps the first 
vessels built by white men's hands upon the lake — certainly 
the first in any number. Hitherto the canoes which went 
through the lake from the south had been carried on men's 
shoulders over the long portage from the Hudson. Of 
course nothing could be used for these wilderness journeys 
but the light bark canoes which the English and Dutch had 
learned to make as well as the Indians. 



The First Century of Lake Champlain 



The party numbered two hundred and sixty-six men, one 
hundred and twenty of whom were Dutch and Enghsh, and 
the rest Mohawk and Mohegan Indians. They were com- 
manded this time by "Quider" himself, and they set out early 
in July of 1691. The 23d they were at Crown Point, and the 
30th at La Prairie, on the St. Lawrence, which they reached 
an hour before daylight. The French were warned of their 
approach and Callieres was in the fort with seven hundred 
men. He sent out a party of four hundred against them, 
but Schuyler and his men met them with great determina- 
tion, and drove them back into the fort with loss. Then 
Schuyler fought his way back through an ambush laid be- 
tween him and the river, and reached his boats again with a 
loss of only twenty-one whites and twenty-two Indians, 
Frontenac himself reported this as the most hotly contested 
engagement of all the border warfare, and it is stated that 
the French official returns showed a loss of two captains, 
six lieutenants, five ensigns and three hundred men. Back 
through the lake came "Quider" in his frail bark flotilla, 
and all New York and New England breathed more freely, 
w^hile final conclusions were drawn in the wigwams of the 
Six Nations. The massacre of Schenectady was avenged, 
"Quider" had shot Frontenac's arrow straight back into the 
defences of Canada, and the savage demand for dramatic 
completeness had received its satisfaction. 

No one, not even Sir William Johnson, understood the 
Indians better than Peter Schuyler, nor dealt with them 
with greater success, whether in trade or in war. In 1710, 



The First Century of Lake Champlain 



twenty years after the massacre of Schenectady, he took 
four Mohawk chiefs across the ocean with him to London, 
where they stayed seven months, going about in their native 
costume, and making a great sensation. They were pre- 
sented at Queen Anne's court, and Steele and Addison 
wrote about them in the Spectator. One of them was Hen- 
drick, a very sagacious man, who lived to see almost the 
final struggle between France and England on this conti- 
nent, as he was with Sir William Johnson at the battle of 
Lake George in 1755, and was there killed. 

Johannes Schuyler, the younger brother of "Quider," was 
only less distinguished than he, and his exploits would make 
perhaps a more romantic story. In 1697 he was sent as 
envoy by Lord Bellomont, Governor of New York, to Fron- 
tenac in Canada, with important letters, and dined in state 
with the governor at Quebec. He was the grandfather of 
Gen. Philip Schuyler, Commander-in-chief of the Northern 
Army in the war of the Revolution. 

Peter Schuyler had many descendants. His first wife was 
Angelica Van Schaick, and his second, whom he married 
only a few weeks after his return from his expedition into 
Canada, was Maria Van Rensselaer. He died in 1724, aged 
sixty-seven years, and was buried in the family burying 
ground on his own farm at 'The Flatts" above Albany, 
where great trees have grown above him since he played so 
stirring a part in our early history. 

The Indians never allowed the name and fame of later 
actors on that stage the scenery of which changed so rapidly 



The First Century of Lake Champlain 



from the forest setting of his day, to displace their respect 
and affection for Peter Schuyler. Long after his death, at the 
opening of the Revolution in 1775, a Committee of the Con- 
tinental Congress, appointed to treat with the Six Nations 
with the purpose of securing their neutrality in the coming 
conflict, deemed it necessary to address them in writing with 
this formal preamble : "We, the representatives of Congress 
and the descendants of Quider." Thus the memory of Peter 
Schuyler linked one century with another. 

This first century on the lake, the seventeenth in Christian 
chronology, was the century of the bark canoe, as the second 
was that of the sailing vessel, and the third was the century 
of the steamboat. The lake as these four men knew it was 
an unbroken wilderness from end to end, one hundred and 
fifty miles of water travel without fall or portage, and with 
no hindering current — an invitation to red man or white 
to leave the sheltering forest and seek distant adventure. 
Not a single home in all the fertile valley, nor a clearing 
made by the settler's axe. Nothing but the flitting wigwam 
of the Iroquois, pitched here and there on a sandy plain, 
and the eagle's nest in the top of the tall pine. 

In the next hundred years settlement was much retarded 
by the events of two decisive wars — one of which gave the 
lake to England, and another which gave it to the colonists 
themselves — and it is only in the third century (the nine- 
teenth) that we find full development of natural resources. 
The fourth now opens before us, perhaps with ships of the 
air for our children to journey in, but we who love the lake 
know how little any of these things can ever change it. 

New York, May 14, 1909. 

f\s \0T' V^l b V 6 Y w 



WESTPORT INN AND COTTAGES 

Westport-on-Lake-Champlain 

Eastern Gateway o( the Adirondacks 

Fine views, boating, fishing, riding, driving. 
Golf links and tennis court. Purest 
mountain spring vs^ater. No mosquitoes. 
Telephone and telegraph. Eight hours 
from Nev^ York and four from Montreal. 
Accommodates one hundred and fifty. 



H. P. SMITH. Manager 

Westport, N. Y. 



my B7 ^^^^ 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



014 107 780 6 



